Combat!

Combat! is an American television program that originally aired on ABC from 1962 until 1967. (The exclamation point in “Combat!” was a stylized bayonet.) The show covered the grim lives of a squad of American soldiers fighting the Germans in France during World War II, and starred Rick Jason as platoon leader Second Lieutenant Gil Hanley and Vic Morrow as Sergeant “Chip” Saunders.

Broadcast history

“Combat!” premiered on ABC October 2, 1962 and was broadcast for five seasons. TV’s longest-running World War II drama (through May 2012), “Combat!” aired 152 hour-long episodes. The first four seasons, spanning 127 episodes, were produced in black and white, with the final season, 25 episodes long, filmed in color. The show was developed by Robert Pirosh, who wrote the pilot episode.

Although the series ran for five seasons, King Company (the Army unit around whose fictional experiences the program was centered) never fought its way out of France, despite the fact that the real U.S. Army fought there for less than a year.

Starring billing alternated between Morrow and Jason every episode so that each was top-billed in the opening credits exactly 76 times. At the bottom line, Morrow appeared much more often than Jason, and accumulated much more screen time, though their contracts were virtually identical. Jason’s contract allowed him considerable time off to pursue his passion of big game hunting in season and other various interests, as described in his autobiography,Scrapbooks Of My Mind.